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The Stylistic Analysis of “the Supreme Illusion” by Arnold Bennette

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The Stylistic Analysis of “the Supreme Illusion” by Arnold Bennette
The Stylistic Analysis of “The Supreme Illusion” by Arnold Bennette

I`d like to speculate upon Arnold Bennette and one of his works. Arnorld Bennette is a British novelist, playwright, critic, essayist and journalist. His first published novel was The Man From The North. This was followed by Anna of The Five Towns, The Old Wives` Tale, Clayhanger, The Card and Hilda Lessways. Bennette is credited with more than 80 books and during the 1920s was considered among the leaders of English literature. And now I`d like to analyse a tragic tale from The Matodor of the Five Towns which is called The Supreme Illusion. As for the title, it`s a topical one. This text is about one of man`s disillusions and this suitable title helps us to understand the contents of the story, which deals with such themes as art, theatre and famous people and their satisfied ambitions. According to its form, it`s a short story in 2 parts. A narrator comes to Paris for the production of Notre-Dame de la Lune but at the hotel an ugly woman upsets his arrival. He meets his friend Minor Boissy and they talk about Minor`s careeras a playwright. Boissy tells about his leading actress Blanche and the narrator believes that she`s a young and pretty woman but in fact Blanche is just that woman whom he met having arrived at the hotel. In the plot structure there`s exposition where we make the acquaintance of the characters and Minor tells about his life and Blanche; climax, where the narrator expects Blanche to be magnificent, and denouement – his disappointment. It seems to me that the message of the story can be formulated as a proverb “If you want no disappointment, don`t indulge in illusions” The author uses some stylistic means to create the atmosphere and to convey it to the reader: flashback- to explain the reader the reason of the narrator`s state of excited annoyance; here we can see a great number of epithets describing French hotels (reasonable little hotel,

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